How a Virtual Receptionist Can Help You Reduce Call Volume and Stress
You might think employee burnout is only in your head, but it’s not. Stress-induced burnout actually costs the global economy nearly a trillion dollars every year, according to a study by WHOOP Unite. The tricky thing about employee burnout is that it sneaks up on you. You don’t notice it until it’s too late.
What causes employee burnout most often? Workplace stress. When you have too much work coming in, you start to feel overwhelmed. When you have too many calls to handle, you feel even more stressed out.
Can you reduce your call volume without hurting your business?
Yes, you can. You need a special service for that and it’s called a virtual receptionist. In this post, we’ll show you how it can save you from call volume stress and prevent employee burnout.
Damage Caused by Not Reducing Call Volume Stress
Reducing call volume stress should be at the top of any business’s priorities, especially near the end of a year and the start of a new one. This is because call volume stress directly leads to employee burnout. Employee burnout typically comes in many different forms but the effects on the workplace are always the same.
A drop in productivity and employee morale. If left untreated, these two things almost always lead to an exodus of staff. The cost of losing an employee can be up to two times their salary but the effects don’t end there.
This is because you then have to spend time and resources searching for a replacement and then training said replacement. The losses to your business can quickly balloon out of control.
Other effects of call volume stress include:
- Customer dissatisfaction
- Decreased service quality
- Employee burnout
- Operational inefficiencies
- Long hold times
With that said, how exactly does one go about reducing call volume stress?
Reducing Call Volume Stress by Understanding the Causes of It
Reducing call volume stress can seem like a bit of a paradox.
To many, you either have to reduce the number of calls coming in, which results in a loss of business, or you keep hiring new staff until the problem is temporarily handled. A virtual receptionist is the best way to reduce call volume stress without hurting your business.
However, to use a virtual secretary service to its full potential, you must first understand what it is that causes call volume stress.
Here are the main causes of call volume stress:
- Seasonal Peaks: Seasonal peaks occur during specific times of the year. Typically during the holiday season or during any seasonal promotions that your business may be running. Seeing as how seasonal holidays are a very stressful time of year in general, seasonal promotions and the like can definitely spike up the stress that your staff may feel. The potential influx of calls coming in during the holiday season can certainly be an issue.
- Marketing Campaigns: Marketing campaigns are designed to get those calls coming in. It should come as no surprise that any new marketing campaign launched will certainly result in an influx of calls and therefore stress.
- Product or Service Issues: The launch of any new product or service can go array if any issues are prominent. These issues could come from product design flaws or as is common with services, issues with connecting to said service. Regardless of what the reason may be, any issues with a product or service will assuredly cause an influx of calls to be made.
While now you understand the causes of high call volumes, what can be done about it? After all, seasonal promotions and marketing campaigns are going to occur every single year. The answer is to incorporate a tool into your business that is designed to handle a high amount of calls.
Reducing Call Volume Stress with a Virtual Receptionist
A virtual receptionist is a service that is supposed to automate the monotonous parts of everyday business life. While these parts may seem simple, that doesn’t disqualify them as being important. These everyday monotonous tasks typically eat up a large part of your or your staff’s day, preventing you from focusing on larger-scale issues.
Virtual receptionists also help send out appointment reminders to your customers, clients, and patients. One thing to note, however, is that not all virtual receptionists will offer these features. In fact, only the top-tier virtual receptionists are capable of dealing with call volume spikes and appointment reminders with the care and attention they deserve.
The top-tier virtual receptionist service is a cut above all the rest due to their experience and longevity. They’ve managed to establish themselves by relying on their robust features and quality live agents. That service is known as My Receptionist.
My Receptionist Features
was able to pull ahead of its competition by focusing on what truly matters for a virtual receptionist service and that is quality customer interactions.
Similar services are too obsessed with answering and handling as many calls as possible. The downside to this is that rather than giving your customers and callers the attention they deserve, they are hurrying them out the door.
My Receptionist bucks this trend by allowing you to decide how their live agents will handle each call. You can give them a custom script that they must follow, additionally, you can give My Receptionist access to your schedule so that the service’s live agents can send out appointment reminders for you.
My Receptionist is loaded with features that helped them be regarded as the top virtual receptionist on the market. You can also learn more about how it works on their relevant service pages.
Complete Answering Solution for Reducing Call Volume
Whether you have a big or small business, My Receptionist can handle your needs. But sometimes, you might need more than a virtual receptionist. That’s when you should look for a call center service.
A call center service can help you start a powerful marketing campaign. They do more than just answer calls or remind you of appointments. They can also create a survey for you and collect data from your customers. They are like your own research and development team. The best call center service is Always Answer.
Always Answer Features
Always Answer is by far the most robust and complete answering service on the market. No other call center or virtual receptionist service has the live agents needed to carry out the tasks that Always Answer can. For example, not only do Always Answer’s live agents offer bilingual answering but they have also been trained in and equipped with the latest translation software.
Using this translation software, Always Answer’s live agents can provide language support for more than 170 different languages! In addition to that, these live agents are available 24 hours a day and seven days a week.
Even when your business is closed and you are fast asleep, Always Answer is working hard on your behalf to keep your callers satisfied.
If you wish to review any calls that you missed or simply want to see how Always Answer’s live agents are handling said calls, you can play back any phone call in its entirety. Always Answer automatically records each call and stores it for thirty days at no extra cost to you.
What Reducing Call Volume Stress Can Do for Your Business
Do you want to make your business more efficient and avoid employee burnout? You can do that by reducing your call volume and stress. For this, we have the perfect solution for you: My Receptionist and Always Answer.
These are two amazing services that use live agents who can speak different languages and follow your custom scripts. They can handle your calls, surveys, marketing, and more. You don’t have to worry about anything. Just contact us today and find out how My Receptionist and Always Answer can work for you.
References
- The true cost of employee burnout. (n.d.). Health & Performance Solution for Orgs – WHOOP Unite. https://www.whoopunite.com/blog/business/articles/cost-of-employee-burnout/